Highlights

» Astronomy Persian polymath Nasīr al-Dīn Tūsī was first to put the Sun at the centre of the solar system, 940+ years before Copernicus. He also surmised that the Milky Way was composed of millions of stars (later confirmed by Galileo in 1610)

» Clinical trials Persian polymath al-Razi performed the first controlled medical trial in 890AD, some time before John Haygarth in 1799.

» Surgery Spanish physician Ibn Zuhr developed techniques for removing cataracts and kidney stones, at least 700 years before the West. Thankfully, around 975AD, a fellow scientist al-Zahrāwi had pioneered the use of inhaled anaesthesia to put his patients into a painless sleep during surgery.

» Geography New evidence shows that 11th century Iranian thinker al-Bīrūni proposed the existence and size of America, some 400 years before Columbus.

» Physics Arab mathematician ibn al-Haytham discovered the theory of ‘least time’ (the path taken by a ray of light between two points is always the path that can be traversed in the least time) 650 years before it became Fermat’s Principle.